Freida the Fake News Fanatic

Freida, in her wrinkled glory, scowled at the wrinkled headline. “Moon landing: another giant leap for… LIES?” she sputtered, the teacup nearly toppling from her trembling hand. She wasn’t just skeptical, she was a champion of the “no way, José” school of thought. And the moon landing, oh, that was the Everest of her disbelief.

It all started in Mrs. Peabody’s second-grade class, crayons melting in the Florida heat as they learned about Neil Armstrong’s lunar stroll. Freida, pigtails the color of dandelion fluff, had scrunched her nose then, too. How could people step on a cheese-white orb so far away? It was like jumping onto a cloud – preposterous! That day, in her tiny, pigtailed wisdom, Freida declared it the first of humanity’s grand conspiracies – a “moonlighting” of truth with fabrications.

As she grew, so did her repertoire of skepticism. Flat Earth became her gospel, YouTube rabbit holes her sermons. Every fact that dared to be complex, every event that refused to fit into her tidy mental filing cabinet, morphed into a fantastical conspiracy. COVID masks weren’t just germ shields, they were government antennae designed to steal children’s dreams (not to mention oxygen, apparently). Climate change? A ploy by Big Solar to sell more panels and fry everyone like ants under a magnifying glass.

Her family, bless their patient hearts, tried. Her son, Tim, a lanky astrophysicist with moon rocks on his mantelpiece, would launch into eloquent dissertations about lunar gravity and orbital mechanics. “But Tim,” Freida would counter, tapping her temple, “who put the rocks there? The government, obviously, during their fake moon landing vacations!” Tim would sigh, muttering something about inherited insanity and the price of free-range chicken.

Her neighbors, mostly retirees with skin as leathery as Florida gators, were a more receptive audience. Freida, with her arsenal of outlandish theories, became their court jester, spinning tales of chemtrails and lizard people with an almost Shakespearean flair. They’d sip lemonade on her porch, cackling like a coven over the latest government “hoax,” feeling smugly superior to the sheeple masses.

Today, though, the usual amusement was absent. The headline had punctured a hole in her carefully constructed worldview. If the moon landing was fake, what else was? Was the Earth truly flat, held up by cosmic turtles like in her childhood picture book? The thought sent a shiver down her spine. Maybe, just maybe, she’d been wrong all along.

But no, a defiant snort escaped her. It was just another government trick, a distraction from the real conspiracies. They wanted her to doubt, to crumble, but Freida wouldn’t let them. She’d unravel this new lie too, expose the strings behind the moonlit puppet show. Even if she was the only one watching, Freida the Fake-News Fanatic would keep fighting, armed with her trusty tin foil hat and a lifetime’s supply of skepticism. The battle between truth and her own peculiar reality had just begun.

Final Act of a Fabricated Finale

The air crackled with panic, laced with the acrid tang of smoke. News blared from her toppled radio, a frantic voice announcing the unthinkable – the end of the world. But Freida, huddled amidst the splintered remains of her living room, merely scoffed. “End of the world my Aunt Matilda,” she muttered, “just another government scare tactic.”

Outside, the sky bled crimson, chunks of something fiery raining down with an ominous hiss. Neighbours, faces masks of terror, pounded on her splintered door. “Freida! Get out! It’s real!” Tim, his usually calm eyes wild with fear, shoved a dusty gas mask into her hands. “Mom, please, just come with me!”

But Freida waved them away, the tin foil hat crowning her head askew. “Fake news, all of it! Actors, hired by the illuminati to stage a mass panic! You think I’m falling for that?” She spat at the window, where a figure in a hazmat suit attempted to pry open the shutters. “False flag event! Go peddle your lies elsewhere!”

Fire licked at the edges of the room, the heat prickling her skin. The radio sputtered, the announcer’s voice now a choked garble amidst static. Tim, tears in his eyes, pleaded, “Mom, there’s no time for your theories! This is real!” But Freida, coughing on the acrid smoke, just shook her head, her gaze fixed on a flickering picture of Neil Armstrong planted on the moon. “See? Proof you’ve all been duped since day one! There’s no end, just their puppets dancing for us!”

With a final groan, the radio died. Tim, despair etched on his face, retreated into the inferno, his pleas lost in the growing roar. The roof groaned, collapsing inward, showering Freida in plaster and dust. She coughed, vision blurring, but still clutched the gas mask, untouched. No, she wouldn’t play their game. They wouldn’t make her a part of their grand, fabricated finale.

As darkness encroached, she clung to the moon picture, the wrinkles on Armstrong’s suit the only remaining light. “Soon,” she rasped, a strange calm settling over her, “they’ll cut the cameras, pack up their sets, and wake me up. It’s all just… special effects.”

The last ember of the picture flickered and died. The fire’s heat consumed her, but Freida, eyes glazed, still smiled. In her own fabricated reality, the sky wasn’t falling, it was rising – an artificial curtain drawn to reveal the applause of a non-existent audience. And in that warped, fading world, Freida, the Fake-News Fanatic, took her final, delusional bow.